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Zoo Chocopops

Heading down to the mothership today for Halloween festivities at Yaboo! where I will get to see some of my co-workers kiddies all dressed up. Thought I'd make a few kid friendly treats for the occasion.

First I tempered the milk chocolate. For some reason I've found that if you go dark to light when applying chocolate, it will remain tempered but if you try and go light to dark (i.e. put white chocolate down first, then put dark chocolate on top of it), the lighter chocolate will become untempered and will have fat bloom. In any case... I used the chopstick to apply milk chocolate for a giraffe's spots and a lion's mane. Then I used all milk chocolate for a monkey and an elephant (applying the sticks to these). Once I poured in the white chocolate to the giraffe and lion, I put the sticks there too. I jiggled the mold as I was filling to make sure there were no air bubbles.

Once everything had dried and cooled overnight (you really only need a few hours), I inverted the molds.

So I wanted to try that new ombre cake frosting trend. I used whip cream here on an eggless chocolate cake I made for a potluck at work (for those egg-free individuals on my team). Everyone was sufficiently impressed. I was a little disappointed at the messiness of the blue/purple end, and I kinda ran out of cream, but it tasted good. Anyway...

I was looking all over for pasta bakes that use uncooked pasta. After some modifications due to missing ingredients (my ricotta went bad) this was the random recipe that got my husband to eat like 2.5 helpings and my 4-year-old son to eat a bowl after telling me he didn't want any. Not sure if that's a good thing, but it at least indicated that it tasted good. :)

Ingredients
8 oz uncooked pasta (I used gemelli because I like the shape)
15 oz Sonoma Gourmet Roasted Vegetable pasta sauce (you can use any pasta sauce you like - this is just what we had)
1 c milk
1/4 c water
1/3 c grated parmesan
1 lb sausage (optional)
3/4 c riced cauliflower (optional)
More grated parmesan and cheddar for the top
Fresh ground black pepper

I only threw in the sausage for flavor and the cauliflower so we could pretend we're eating vegetables.

Preheat oven to 375F. If you're using sausage and cauliflower, cook the sausage in a pan first and throw in the cauliflower at the end.